


Live A Little while the World Goes Down

by navaan



Category: We're Alive: Frontier (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, First Time Blow Jobs, Getting Together, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21870199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Asher doesn't tell the team why they have to go West to infected territory. Maybe he can find things there he didn't know he needed.Fix it for Season 1 Episode 3/4
Relationships: Bandaid (We're Alive: Frontier)/Asher Emerson Stern III
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Live A Little while the World Goes Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lauren (notalwaysweak)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/gifts).



> I had no idea where to start with your wonderful request... Callisto 6, LA by Night and We're Alive Frontier were all on the table and love all of them to pieces. I hope you like this little fix-it get together for poor Asher! Have an amazing Yuletide!

The team Jenny put together would have made his father's hair stand on end. Asher had a feeling he knew what Nathan would have told him about this: "Are you sure? I want you to clear the Missouri line because I can't find better. But can't you?"

He grit his teeth.

The comments of Jet and Ryan and father still rang in his ears. Despite his training he was still the guy without enough combat experience. 

You wanted a Stern, then Asher was the last one to go to.

But he was a Stern and he couldn't sit by idly any longer. They needed the supply line to Kansas city — not least of all because everyone needed he crops they could expect if the Livingston community survived.

This was why he gnashed his teeth now and watched the others get ready.

"Ash-hole, you better know what you're doing," Bandaid said as if he had really decided that was going to be his code-name. He was collecting his things, getting ready like the others. 

Asher had no idea what his deal was. The rest of them — Jenny and Rai and even the one called Wraith — were all the kind of civilians he though he could deal with. Bandaid he wasn't sure about at all. He was taking this whole mission to lightly. 

"Give me a chance," Asher snapped, "I might surprise you."

* * *

They could still hear he screeches of infected but the rail driver was on its way. Towards what? Who really knew what to expect. He itched to sit down and study the map, make notes, record the beginning of their journey.

"You took that like a champ, pretty boy," Rai told him and patted him on the shoulder in what for her was a warm and friendly gesture. 

Tension was still high. The fight with the raiders and the escape from a pack of infected had done nothing to build trust here. Asher wasn't going to admit it — Nathan had told him once that if you wanted to lead the first thing you needed was respect and respect wasn't necessarily the same as being well liked — but he should have listened and not confronted the raiders as he had. The noise of the fight _had_ drawn the infected.

He tried to brush past the others and take stock off all that had been taken — but Bandaid got in his way again.

"Let me look at that." He was talking about the wound he'd sustained from a nail spiked wooden bat.

"Stop fuzzing, it's nothing," Asher snapped.

"Oh, oh, oh," Bandaid sing-songed — he wasn't even all that bad looking when his mask was down, but something about his grinning face _grated_ — "we don't want our pretty boy leader to die from a minor flesh wound."

"Yeah, kid," Wraith said from the left where he'd chosen to sit down in the half-darkness, "we want to wait with the dying for the real challenges."

Asher's heart missed a beath and his throat tightened. None of them knew why they were out here, why they were trying to clear a supply line to Kansas city. Asher could not fail... Not because of trade, but because the East needed food.

With an unhappy grunt he finally sat down and let Bandaid clean the wound — which involved wrestling him out of his gloves and part of the body armor he was hiding behind. (He had come out here like a fool maybe, but he wasn't _that_ much of a fool.)

With fingers that were astonishingly nimble, Bandaid dabbed disinfectant over the wounds, slabbed a bandaid on and said: "All new."

"Is that where you get your codename."

"It's probably one of the reasons people don't call me Crowbar."

Rai snorted and went to look if Jenni needed help.

* * *

The most surprising thing wasn't that they found survivors and local communities and that suriviors they found would be wary of them their intentions, the UA and things in the East as much as the things lurking for them in the West.

He struck a deal in Archtown and felt hope that things would work out if they could just get through. 

"You have quite a way with your mouth," Bandaid told him and there's a mocking glint in his eyes — but also something else.

Asher has spent his life around soldiers and combatants, he knows his dad and brother and what they would say if they knew there was a answering spark in Asher. _Keep it down. No room for romance on the battle field._

"I'm Asher Emerson Stern the Third," he answered with his best impression of unimpressed confidence. "I can bargain."

Wraith pressed past them, headphones dangling from his fingers. "Be careful. Bandaid may ask you to bargain if things keep going this way."

His eyes meet Bandaids — not in surprise, just drawn by the sultry implication dripping from Wraith's little joke.

And there it was. The interest. 

He shook his head. He was still just the cocky kid leader on this team.

He still had a way to go before he would consider this.

* * *

The they drive through Eureka. The town's dead. Infected — some fourth and fifth generation, changed and warped and ugly — have taken over. The likelihood of survivors was minimal — and the chances of getting through with the rail driver suddenly looked bad too.

A claw started opening up the rail driver like a sardine can...

He acted, before he had time to think it through...

* * *

They stare at the gaping hole together. He's in pain. His leg hurt like hell, but he'd wound himself out of the grasp of the thing before it could do more damage. 

"You were lucky," Rai said. She was studding the hole. "I could have..."

"It was..." He faltered. Coming face to face with infected — he knew what to expect, he knew why he walked around like a fully armed special ops mission and yet it was different when Infection was a real danger.

She nodded, face grave. "We're all rattled, pretty boy. These things were something else."

"What happened?" Bandaid stood over him suddenly. Dirt and sweat were covering his face.

"I got lucky," Asher repeated Rai's words. He had been. He'd thrown one of stink bombs Bandaid had made from the leftover stuff in Asher's gloves because it had been the only thing he'd been able to grab at the time and it had hit the Infected right in the face. It had reared back and fallen.

"It could have ripped up my leg."

He indicated his crushed shin cover and the leg beneath. 

"It could have cut and infected you," Rai pointed out. She was holding a lamp for Bandaid as they were both checking him for wounds.

"We better burn this," Bandaid pointed at the broken pieces of armor.

"His pants?" Rai deadpanned.

"Not on Rai's watch," Asher tried to joke but the adrenaline was tapering off and the pain was only now catching up to him. They would perhaps have to cut the uniform away to see how deep the armor had penetrated.

"No blood on him," Bandaid finally concluded. There was just a moment of relief. "Not sure about the leg though."

* * *

He spent part of the next hours knocked out by anesthetics. He might have dreamed he'd been infected — Bandaid slipping him the a anesthetics as if he was a dog to be put down.

He woke in a sweat. Bandaid was sitting beside him, stoking fingers through his hair in a surprisingly gentle gesture. 

"You come in handy," Asher muttered.

"You're welcome, Ash-hole," Bandaid replied without smiling. "You got us really worried."

Nobody else was here though. And Asher could read the _I_ in the we clearly. Something inside of him stirred.

He'd never been so close to dying before.

"Who's Nathan?" Bandaid asked and there was a not of something darker — distrust or jealousy, Asher couldn't tell.

"My brother," he said. "How do you...?"

"Dead? You kept muttering his name."

Asher shook his head. "I hope not. He was alive... Well." He wasn't sure he should say that Nathan was the government contact he was talking to when he could. He wasn't saying that things were strained between them and Asher was the little puppy brother who had to prove himself. "I hope to see him again at the end of this."

Bandaid nodded.

* * *

They make out for the first time in the rail driver, mouths exploring, need to be quiet making it as thrilling as the fact that they were standing in the open wilderness, their friends gathering wood to get them further towards Kansas.

"I don't know wha'll happen," he gasps and admits.

"Nobody does, ever," Bandaid whispers back and slides to his knees, in front of Asher and his half opened pants.

He had trouble keeping his moans in, arched his back, forgot the pain and danger... For now, he found a quick-fix to the pain and fear, a new reason to make it to Kansas in one piece and keep it together...

He came, biting the back of his hand, fingers of the other hand buried in Bandaid's hair.

* * *

"What are you writing, pretty soldier boy?" Bandaid asked. 

"Notes. Glad you have a new name for me."

Bandaid stuck. "I'm sure you can earn better."

"I might."

"Always good for surprises." Bandaid went back to help Jenny.

In his notes Asher wrote: "I wasn't sure about Bandaid. I'm still not sure what his deal is, but I think I can trust him. I think I can trust all of them. As soon as we have the rail driver off the rails and on wheels, we'll be moving onward into the unknown. The supply line has to be secured."


End file.
